Here’s Quentin Tarantino On What He Wants To Do With STAR TREK

We're still reeling over today's news that Quentin Tarantino has pitched a new Star Trek movie to Paramount, is working on it with JJ Abrams, and may even direct the damn thing. That's news so improbable it had to come either from April 1st of any year, or any day of 2017. But Deadline's story didn't feature any information about what Tarantino's pitch is, exactly. Luckily, thanks to a December 2015 interview on the Nerdist Podcast, we might have a little glimmer of an idea.

I'll let you listen first - it's pretty short, though as dense as you'd imagine:

A few things going on here. Tarantino expresses distaste for Star Trek Into Darkness (check), but appreciation for the reboot cast (also check); he also notes that in the reboot universe (or the Kelvin timeline, for true fans), the events of the original series very well may still happen, even if they're slightly altered. He then goes on to discuss the notion of remaking classic episodes with full casts and bigger budgets, namechecking The Original Series' "City on the Edge of Forever" (as well as the fact that it's obvious to namecheck "City on the Edge of Forever"). That's when things get real interesting.

Tarantino's pitch - if it's anything like what he describes in the interview - would seem to revolve around the Next Generation Season 3 episode "Yesterday's Enterprise." One of the best episodes in the franchise's history, it deals with time travel and alternate realities, forcing Picard and his crew to choose between altering the timeline to save the mysteriously reappeared USS Enterprise-C, throwing the quadrant into war, or saving the timeline and dooming that ship and her crew. A classic trolley-problem episode, only with significantly higher stakes.

While the interview cuts off before Tarantino can explain his precise take on the idea, my suspicion/speculation is that, rather than straight-up remaking "Yesterday's Enterprise," his pitch could rework its premise to unify the two parallel realities into which Trek canon is now split. Perhaps the reboot's Enterprise could be put into the Enterprise-C's role; perhaps Kirk, Spock, and company would have to make a similar decision about a completely different vessel. Like, for example, the USS Kelvin, destroyed at the opening of 2009's Star Trek. There's already been talk of bringing Chris Hemsworth's George Kirk back for the fourth film in the reboot series; maybe that idea can be combined with Tarantino's to seal off the Kelvin timeline once and for all.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 3 [Blu-ray]

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Andrew is a New Zealand-born writer, filmmaker, and theatre practitioner living in Montréal. He can be read at Birth.Movies.Death., SlashFilm, IGN, Polygon, and elsewhere. His favourite movie is MIRACLE MILE, his favourite band is the Manic Street Preachers, and his favourite commenters are the ones who read the article first.